Even among the legendary filmmakers of the Hollywood New Wave of the 1970s, Terrence Malick has always been something of a mythologized figure, both for the ineffable, painterly quality of his films and for the fact that he fell silent for 20 years after making two of the decade’s greatest. It takes some strong work to propel a director’s legend across that long a dry patch, but “Days of Heaven” (1978), Malick’s second film – which screens in a brand-new 4K remaster this weekend at The Brattle Theatre – is most certainly that. The story of “Days of Heaven” is relatively simple, a love triangle between a pair of sharecroppers (Richard Gere and Brooke Adams) and the wealthy farmer who employs them (Sam Shepard). The allure of the film is in the textures: the glowing, magic-hour cinematography of Néstor Almendros, the shimmering score by Ennio Morricone and, perhaps most hauntingly, the plainspoken narration by Linda Manz, who plays Gere’s younger sister with an uncommon rawness. Malick has become (relatively) more prolific in his old age, having directed an additional seven features and a handful of shorts since reemerging with 1998’s “The Thin Red Line,” but it is “Days of Heaven” that will undoubtedly remain at the center of his mystique.
Few terms spark greater reveries in television devotees than “brilliant but canceled”: shows that were unceremoniously given the ax by baffled network executives, only to win over legions of die-hard fans through reruns and home video. Created in 1999 by “Simpsons” writers Bill Oakley and Josh Weinstein, the animated one-season wonder “Mission Hill” was perhaps the wrong show at the wrong time, adopting the look and feel of 1990s alt-comix just as Generation X was passing into middle age. But the show’s single season found new life in the early 2000s thanks to Cartoon Network’s nascent Adult Swim block, which dropped its 13 episodes into late-night rotation. Soon, the amiable hangout comedy – about a 20-something slacker, his hipster roommates and his dorky younger brother who is forced to live with them – became a beloved touchstone among millennial insomniacs. In celebration of the show’s 25th anniversary, Oakley and Weinstein will be in attendance at the Somerville Theatre this Friday to present a selection of the show’s most popular episodes, remastered in HD with all original soundtrack cues intact. It’s the next best thing to a Criterion edition rerelease of “The Man from Pluto.”
One of the nice things about the end of April – at least to those with a taste for the spooky – is that it means there’s only six months until the end of October. To celebrate this official “Halfway to Halloween” turning point, The Brattle will screen the first three films in John Carpenter’s seminal “Halloween” series of slasher films, presented in various combinations of double- and triple-features from Sunday through Wednesday. Carpenter’s 1978 original needs no introduction to fans of horror cinema; it is the film that codified the slasher format, yet the stark minimalism of its scares has never been fully replicated. (It is a joy to watch on the big screen. Try to see how many times you can spot masked killer Michael Myers lurking unnoticed in the background of an otherwise innocuous scene of dialogue.) “Halloween II” in 1981 (which Carpenter co-wrote, but passed directorial duties onto Rick Rosenthal) brings the series into the decade’s maximalism: It’s bigger, bloodier and anything but subtle. The real treat, however, is 1982’s series-oddball “Halloween III: Season of the Witch.” Myers isn’t in this one at all, beyond a few scenes in which characters watch the first two films on TV; instead, the story concerns a sinister cult of pagans trying to control children via booby-trapped Halloween masks. For years, “Halloween III” was derided by purists, but it has grown beloved over time for its cockeyed story and over-the-top performances (particularly Dan O’Herlihy, who plays the cult leader with the same gleeful hamminess he brought to “RoboCop” and “Twin Peaks”). Together, the films should hold you over until CVS restocks its candy corn.
The Somerville Theatre continues its “Attack of the Killer B-Movies” series of schlocky discount double features on Sunday with vehicles for everyone’s second-favorite giant Japanese reptile, Gamera. For those unfamiliar in kaiju-ology, Gamera was Daiei Studios’ answer to Toho’s massively popular Godzilla series: a towering, snaggletoothed turtle who jets around the universe fighting other monsters and befriending human children. In “Gamera vs. Guiron,” our hero in the half-shell follows a pair of precocious youngsters to a faraway planet to do battle with a dimwitted dino with a knife for a nose (fans of TV’s “Mystery Science Theater 3000” will remember this entry for its maddeningly infectious theme song). “Gamera vs. Viras,” meanwhile, sees the titanic terrapin defending the earth against a race of top-heavy squid monsters. It should go without saying Gamera was never in competition with Akira Kurosawa in the hearts and minds of Japanese film critics, but how many of the Emperor’s films featured a rocket-propelled turtle fighting a flying saucer?
If you haven’t had your fill of cinematic cheese, you can head to the Capitol Theatre on Monday for its monthly “Disasterpiece Theater” screening. Sponsored by Somerville’s High Energy Vintage, the event channels the prurient delights of a tipsy trip to the video store: The films are presented on fuzzy VHS, the audience is encouraged to heckle, and there’s even a videotape swap meet in the lobby for the physical media faithful. This month’s offering is 1984’s “The Ark of the Sun God,” a low-rent Italian Indiana Jones knockoff featuring car chases, leather jackets and what’s sure to be some, uh, adventurous dubbing. If you’ve ever wished you could still make it a Blockbuster Night, this event is for you.
The Landmark Kendall Square Cinema rounds out its monthlong “New Hollywood” series on Tuesday with one of the greatest paranoid thrillers of all time: Brian De Palma’s 1981 “Blow Out.” John Travolta, in one of his first non-doofus roles, plays a Hollywood sound designer who, while recording some ambient noise by a river late at night, accidentally captures the sound of a deadly car crash, which slowly reveals itself to be just one part of a vast political conspiracy. De Palma is sometimes accused of pastiche – he here takes the core plot element of Michelangelo Antonioni’s “Blow Up” and threads it through Hitchcock’s model of psychosexual suspense – but “Blow Out” is an undeniable work of pop filmmaking, and as urgent and bleak a political potboiler as has ever been made. Its heart-stopping climax, set against the backdrop of a bicentennial fireworks display, is unsettling in the best of times; in the midst of a deeply divided election year, it’s positively chilling.
Oscar Goff is a writer and film critic based in Somerville. He is film editor and senior critic for the Boston Hassle and his work has appeared in the monthly Boston Compass newspaper and publications such as WBUR’s The ARTery and iHeartNoise. He is a member of the Boston Society of Film Critics, the Boston Online Film Critics Association, and the Online Film Critics Society.
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